I was with you until I read the above.chitwnvw wrote:
It matters little what we do here.
The millions and billions of little decisions we make every day are building something huge.
While many religions totally tie themselves up in knots with the intrinsic conflict of free-will and their inane determinism of an Omnipotent God, I choose to think that when God gave us free will, he basically was throwing a Hail Mary and praying that we would find the right decisions.
If you allow the enormity of free will, it suddenly puts this whole planet in our hands where it belongs. We have to do the work. Every damn step matters. And we are free to fuck it up. And those idiot fundamentalists who absolve themselves of any responsibility to keep this humanity experiment growing ("hey don't worry about it, Armageddon's right around the corner, I know I'm going to heaven. . .") are going to be in for a rude surprise at the Gates of St. Peter when he asks, "soooooo, whadjado to nurture your God-given Paradise down there?" and they stammer, "but the Good Book said that there would be tribulations, so I helped tribulate."
Even with an aetheist perspective, this intricate and beautiful planet requires careful stewarding, you can't back away from that. That's the beauty of this cosmic design, it has room for all of us and it requires effort from all of us. It has never demanded more from us than we can handle, ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is an enormous pain in the ass, because once you know, you can't pretend that you . . . uh. . . forgot. Not when it comes to decisions of how you lead your life.
So you be exquisitely gentle and consistent with your misbehaving dog, it leaves a lasting impression on your four year-old daughter who becomes the mom of an incredibly difficult bright child who is successfully raised through this idiot culture with the same gentle sureness his mom witnessed as a child and discovers easy cold fusion technology and saves the world from hot energy, ya never know.
Colin
